• Posted September 2, 2026

Back Braces Don't Seem To Help Ease Pain, Review Finds

Back braces have been used for decades to treat low back pain, but a new review has concluded that they don’t appear to help much.

There’s little to no quality evidence available showing that back braces are effective in easing back pain, according to a new Cochrane review.

As a result, they can’t be recommended as a means of helping with back pain, researchers concluded.

“Lumbar supports are widely used in clinical practice despite the fact we know virtually nothing about their effectiveness,” lead researcher Dr. Chiara Arienti, an assistant professor at Humanitas University in Milan, said in a news release.

“Drawing from a very thin research base, we still don’t have enough evidence to make broad recommendations for or against their use,” she said.

Back braces are inexpensive lumbar supports that strap across the abdomen in an attempt to stabilize the lower back, researchers said in background notes.

For the new review, researchers reviewed eight previous clinical trials involving more than 500 adults ages 25 to 78. The trials evaluated the effectiveness of back braces used either on their own or alongside other treatments like pain medications and/or exercise.

Results showed very little to no benefit from braces, with the possible exception of a small short-term reduction in pain intensity when used with pain meds like ibuprofen, researchers said.

The research team also noted one interesting point regarding research on back braces: Most of the trials were conducted in low- and middle-income countries.

This might reflect the fact that higher-income countries already have turned away from back braces to more active interventions like exercise therapy, education and mind-body approaches to pain management, researchers said.

In poorer countries where these treatments are less accessible, people instead opt for cheap back braces in an attempt to deal with their pain, researchers said.

"It's striking that most of the research on lumbar supports is coming from areas where active treatments are harder to access," senior researcher Dr. Stefano Negrini, a professor at the University of Milan, said in a news release.

“There’s enough data now showing that active treatments have a clinical effect on low back pain, but these treatments can be very expensive because they require rehabilitation professionals' involvement,” he said.

More study is needed to further investigate whether low-cost devices like back braces can offer help to any specific types of patients, given that the population is aging around the globe, researchers said.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on managing chronic back pain.

SOURCE: Cochrane, news release, Sept. 1, 2026